"The day before yesterday, on my arrival at Paris, I heard she was
dead; I sent to his lodgings to enquire if they had any news of him,
and word was brought me he came to town the night before, which was
precisely the day that Madam de Tournon died; I immediately went to see
him, concluding in what condition I should find him, but his affliction
far surpassed what I had imagined.
"Never did I see a sorrow so deep and so tender; the moment he saw me
he embraced me with tears; 'I shall never see her more,' said he, 'I
shall never see her more, she is dead, I was not worthy of her, but I
shall soon follow her.'
"After this he was silent; and then, from time to time, continually
repeating 'She is dead, I shall never see her more,' he returned to
lamentations and tears, and continued as a man bereft of reason. He
told me he had not often received letters from her during his absence,
but that he knew her too well to be surprised at it, and was sensible
how shy and timorous she was of writing; he made no doubt but she would
have married him upon his return; he considered her as the most amiable
and constant of her sex; he thought himself tenderly beloved by her; he
lost her the moment he expected to be united to her for ever; all these
thoughts threw him into so violent an affliction, that I own I was
deeply touched with it.
"Nevertheless I was obliged to leave him to go to the King, but
promised to return immediately; accordingly I did, and I was never so
surprised as I was to find him entirely changed from what I had left
him; he was standing in his chamber, his face full of fury, sometimes
walking, sometimes stopping short, as if he had been distracted;
'Come,' says he, 'and see the most forlorn wretch in the world; I am a
thousand times more unhappy than I was a while ago, and what I have
just heard of Madam de Tournon is worse than her death.'
"I took what he said to be wholly the effect of grief, and could not
imagine that there could be anything worse than the death of a mistress
one loves and is beloved by; I told him, that so far as he kept his
grief within bounds, I approved of it, and bore a part in it; but that
I should no longer pity him, if he abandoned himself to despair and
flew from reason. 'I should be too happy if I had lost both my reason
and my life,' cried he; 'Madam de Tournon was false to me, and I am
informed of her unfaithfulness and treachery the very day after I was
informed of her death; I am informed of it at a time when my soul is
filled with the most tender love, and pierced with the sharpest grief
that ever was; at a time when the idea of her in my heart, is that of
the most perfect woman who ever lived, and the most perfect with
respect to me; I find I am mistaken, and that she does not deserve to
be lamented by me; nevertheless I have the same concern for her death,
as if she had been true to me, and I have the same sensibility of her
falsehood, as if she were yet living; had I heard of her falsehood
before her death, jealousy, anger, and rage would have possessed me,
and in some measure hardened me against the grief for her loss; but now
my condition is such, that I am incapable of receiving comfort, and yet
know not how to hate her.'